The Venezuelan American Endowment for the Arts, VAEA is thrilled to announce our inaugural artist-in-residence will be American Artist Charlie Nesi. This program offers professional visual and performing artists the opportunity to pursue their artistic disciplines while being inspired by Mexico’s extraordinary landscapes. VAEA’s first recipient of the Artist-in-Residency program is American visual artist Charles Nesi who traveled to Mexico during the summer of 2015.

The Artist-in-Residency program aims to bring alternative spaces for the development of creative proposals of artistic production, cultural reflection and dialogue between different communities and artists working on different disciplines and mediums. With this program VAEA aspires to stimulate the contemporary art discourse  while furthering new models for the production and dissemination of culture.

This program takes place in partnership with [R.A.T.] Residencia Artistica por Intercambio from Mexico. Charlie Nesi’s participation in VAEA’s Residency Program was sponsored by a Padrino, from VAEA Grants.

About the artist Charles Nesi…

Born and raised in New York, Charlie Nesi claims to be nothing more than just another product of his environment. Coming from a background of fashion and art, his works explore the relationship between artistic expression, celebrity culture and advertisement that we observe on a daily basis. Through an exploration of color, text, abstraction and figuration, Nesi draws on various visual styles ultimately reflecting upon the inherent vanity disguised behind the smoke and mirrors. For more on Charlie Nesi’s work visit VAEA’s Artist Registry.

About [R.A.T.] Residency Program…

Promotes the technical and intellectual exchange between artists and other cultural practitioners. The Residence is defined as an opportunity to build communication channels and develop site specific projects. The process of production, reception, and appropriation of art and culture in this program is expected to keep an open, non-elitist profile (as fas as possible). This system, based on the home exchange idea, offers one participation modality, the minimum stay is one week and the maximum is four within the same calendar year. Its venues, located in Mexico City, are open all year round. [R.A.T.] Coordinators will decide upon the assignation of the host-residency according to space availability and project specific requirements.